Nancy Buirski

Director/Producer

Nancy Buirski is the founder of Augusta Films. She is the Director/Producer/Writer of The Rape of Recy Taylor that recently had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American Premiere at the New York Film Festival. It was awarded the prestigious Human Rights Nights Special Prize for Human Rights this year at the 74° Venice Biennale. Buirski is the Director/Producer/Writer of By Sidney Lumet (2015) that had its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. She Produced/Directed/Wrote Afternoon of a Faun, World Premiere at the 51st New York Film Festival, International Premiere at the 64th Berlinale and record-breaking U.S theatrical release by Kino Lorber. She is Director/Producer/Writer of the Oscar shortlisted, Peabody and Emmy Award-winning The Loving Story (2012). She is a Producer of Loving by Jeff Nichols. She is directing Endangered, an animated feature based on Eliot Schrefer’s YA novel and will direct a narrative version of Afternoon of a Faun.

Buirski is a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences. She founded and ran the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. She is the photographer and author of Earth Angels: Migrant Children in America and was the Foreign Picture Editor at The New York Times.

Claire L. Chandler

Producer

Claire L. Chandler is a producer and editor specializing in feature documentaries. Selected recent credits include Producer of Nancy Buirski’s The Rape of Recy Taylor and Co-Producer of By Sidney Lumet. She edited Father’s Kingdom and The Yes Men Are Revolting, and was associate producer/editor on The Light In Her Eyes (POV) and Jehane Noujaim’s Egypt: We Are Watching You (BBC, ARTE). She has worked on films released and broadcast worldwide including on PBS, HBO, ARTE, and BBC. She has also directed, produced, and edited numerous art film and video pieces.

Susan Margolin

Producer

Susan Margolin has built a reputation as a pioneer of home entertainment and digital distribution and a dedicated supporter of the independent filmmaking community. Her company, New Video, launched in 1992 with partner Steve Savage, became a leading global force in independent home entertainment. New Video’s library of films, television and web content, featured programming from leading brands including A+E, History Channel, Monty Python, Thames Television, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Films, Major League Baseball and Scholastic.

Through Docurama Films, a subsidiary of New Video, Margolin championed more than 400 award-winning non-fiction films, from Academy Award nominees including Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War, Joe Berlinger’s Paradise Lost trilogy, Danfung Dennis’ Hell and Back Again, Nancy Buirski’s The Loving Story and D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, and built the largest independent digital aggregation company in North America. Margolin and Savage sold New Video/Docurama Films to Cinedigm in 2012. As Co-President of Cinedigm Entertainment Group, Margolin released critically acclaimed independent films including Daniel Destin Crettin’s Short Term 12.

Margolin recently launched St. Marks Productions LLC, a production and distribution services company. She is currently producing Director Alexandra Codina’s upcoming feature documentary, Unaccompanied Children. Her recent productions include Nancy Buirski’s critically acclaimed feature documentary, The Rape of Recy Taylor, distributed by The Orchard, and both Cheryl Miller Houser and Cynthia Wade’s documentary feature Generation Startup and Judith Helfand’s upcoming feature documentary Love & Stuff, on which she served as Executive Producer. Margolin currently serves on the Board of Directors of Chicken & Egg Pictures and the Hamptons Take Two Film Festival, and also serves on the advisory board of New York Women in Film and Television. She was honored by the Producers Guild of America as one of the “Digital 25: Leaders in Emerging Entertainment.”

Dr. Amy Tiemann

Executive Producer

Dr. Amy Tiemann is the Founder and President of Spark Productions and an owner of Manifold Recording, a world-class media production studio in Pittsboro, North Carolina. An an award-winning author, educator and media producer, Dr. Tiemann beings informed insights to each of her varied projects. Her Executive Producer credits include the acclaimed documentaries The Rape of Recy Taylor and Olympic Pride, American Prejudice (2016), which explores beyond the mythology of Jesse Owens as a solo hero to tell the story of all 18 pioneering African-American athletes who honorably represented the USA at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; and the forthcoming doc Overland (2018), a soaring, cross-cultural film about the art of falconry.

As a scientist Tiemann earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University. Her background includes years of cutting edge brain research as well as extensive high school and university-level teaching experience. Tiemann has been a passionate, lifelong advocate for human rights and equality. She is a nationally recognized expert on personal safety for people of all ages and is the co-author of Doing Right by Our Kids: Protecting Child Safety at All Levels of Society (2018) with the founder of Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International, a global nonprofit leader in personal safety education. Tiemann's interest in personal safety and self-development extends to martial arts; she is a black belt practitioner of to-shin do ninjutsu.

Each of these areas of expertise informs Dr. Tiemann's perspectives as a production company head and executive producer.